222 Responses

If the courts want to suppress names, I think it would work better if they suppressed all identifying information

The standard suppression order does include a ban on any details likely to identify the defendant. This would be the bit that often gets flouted.

As a friend of mine pointed out, the use of the word "disorder" without the "-ly conduct" part conveys a very different meaning.

As I note over on MediaLawJournal, disorderly behaviour charges seem to be used as a troubling catch-all for people who police think are getting stroppy. Convictions for low-level nebulous offences such as disorderly and offensive behaviour have gone up from about 2000 a year in 1990 to more than 10,000 since 2008.

I’m realistic about the Herald’s need to keep up circulation and page views, and I know that “celebrity” coverage is part of any such effort in our day and age. But I would still hope that a paper fond of making grand claims for the role of the press could restrain itself from pimping out its front page like this. And, more so, that it would have the decency to own its own actions thereafter, rather than point furiously in any direction but home. It is, after all, only what we would expect a child to do.

A loosely sleaved batch of wood product and ink blots personified in the modern human's mind to the extent that it is perceived to have needs and fondness, expected to exercise the disciplines of self- restraint and decency, whilst pimping, furiously, as a child. It almost obscures the fact that it's an inanimate object, produced by a random assortment of the population, attempting accord to thoroughly abstracted guidelines, with the ostensibly singular purpose solely being to generate income.

It's normally my policy not to engage personally with news items, but in this case... an exception.

My experience matches that of John Campbell - I never spoke with any media to deny rumours the "celebrity" was me (fwiw, I'm just a newsreader). Iirc, the SS-T asserted it was neither of us in it's follow-up story on Jan 2.

It’s just such a load of old bollocks that this was even news. Seriously. A man gets a bit pissed off at his wife, he acted like a bit of a dick and sat on the bonnet of his car. 1) why was he arrested and not simply cautioned to stop acting like a dick and 2) why would the Herald think it was news. And 3) why would they whip it all up into such a bloody big deal, so that everyone invariably wondered, in that salacious way that humans have, whose “celeb” marriage was on the rocks. Whoever instigated this bloody mess should just resign now. It wasn’t news, it never needed to be, and meanwhile peoples’ reputations could have been damaged. Christ.

Has The Herald learned nothing from the grovelling apology the Herald on Sunday had to give Sharon Shipton? (Not least the tacit admission quotes attributed to her were false.)

Precisely. And what's the point of printing apologies and retractions if they're only going to be buried in a sidebar corner?

No matter how much of a dick Martin Devlin is, the Granny once again concocted a storm in a latte cup. And the innocent parties wouldn't have been tarred with the brush, if the Granny hadn't tried to poke its nose where the sun never shines.

And further to the anti-PC laddishness of Game of Two Halves, SportsCafe and the Anna Faris incident, it seems loosely related to English soccer hooliganism. The common thread is a desperate need to compensate for the weakening of their self-proclaimed dominance.

"Speculation has since been rife as to the man's identity. TVNZ's Simon Dallow and TV3's John Campbell – both born in 1964 and living in Auckland – have been the subject of erroneous online gossip. Neither is the charged man.

and slightly OT do I perceive, it being election year, the Herald moving into it’s traditional beefed up anti Labour whacking mode ?

Nah, if anything Goff and Cunliffe should be profoundly grateful that Idiot Savant’s fact-based, intellectually honest fisking of how Labour’s intends to pay for its tax policy is exceedingly unlikely to be repeated in the mainstream media.

Has The Herald learned nothing from the grovelling apology the Herald on Sunday had to give Sharon Shipton?

Why would it? If the only punishment is a small correction on page 3 days, weeks or months later, then why would any newspaper go to the trouble of ensuring their stories are accurate or fair? The Press Council is toothless, relying on a fast-disappearing principle of reputation to maintain its role as arbiter.

One would think that professional journalists who know they have a regular late night spot shouldn't be going for the "tired, late night" excuse - shoddy is what I'm saying - and it just means I can't trust anything they say if they can't be arsed getting the small stuff right...